Software

With the N5550 hooked up and the three Western Digital RED drives installed I finally had a chance to boot everything up and to take a peek at its software. Once I reached the IP of the device, I was greeted with a fairly basic and clean login screen. There is also a flash version of this same page, personally I found the flash version to be a little harder to figure out though. It does look much better, but without clear labels as to what each option does it takes some getting used to.

sw software

sw 1

Before doing anything else, it was important to get the hard drives installed and formatted and, in our case, setup the RAID. This way I would be able to play around with every option and later also put the N5550 to the test to see how it performs as well. Thecus does give you an easy way to setup your RAID using a wizard, as you can see below they just ask you simple questions and then it sets everything up for you.

sw software2

With our RAID setup, we are now free to explore the rest of the N5550’s interface. The first thing that stood out to me was the notifications up in the top right corner of the screen. Much like a facebook notification, Thecus has set it up to let you know if there are any problems. In this case, I put in the wrong password and one of our notifications was letting me know that someone attempted to log in with the wrong password. Its normal for all NAS drives to track this sort of thing, but putting the notifications in an easy to find location like that does help bring attention to them and show their importance.

As for the rest of the layout, the N5550’s interface was similar to what we have seen from its competition. On the left side of the page you have six sections, with each having multiple options to work with. For example, system information has general, status, system log, online registration, syslog management, system monitor, and hardware information. All of those options are important ways for you to get updates on the N5550’s status, performance, and even details on the hardware inside. All of those options are important but maybe not something you would check every day, breaking them up under System Information as a whole keeps the interface from being to cluttered.

Opening each of the six sections closes the other sections, personally I would love to be able to open one or two at a time and minimize the others. This way you can flip to what is important to you quickly.

sw 2

The best option listed in the first section is the system monitor, from here you can monitor both with graphs and normal numbers the N5550’s performance both over the network as well as memory and CPU performance. You even have options to watch fan speed and NAS temperatures to make sure that it isn’t overheating in the location that you store in. This is especially important to me because ours is in a closest with a server and two other NAS’s and two laser printers. It’s easy to forgot about your devices and just assume they are safe because they are still running, this way you can double check to make sure you aren’t causing any damage due to temperature’s.

sw 3

Moving down into the system management section, I came across an option that caught my interest, called scheduled on/off. This option allows you to set times each day for the N5550 to be on and off. This is interesting especially for power usage but also just for the wear and tear on the drives and NAS itself. For a business, they could set the NAS to power on just before opening time and stay off overnight and over weekends when it wouldn’t be getting any use. In my situation where I can be found working day, night and weekend depending on my schedule, it would never work out. But it’s great that they include that as an option.

sw 4

The network option was fairly basic, with the normal options to set your IP on both of the two network ports. They do include support for link aggregation to be able to use the two network ports together as one for more speed but unless you are running SSD’s in the N5550 that will most likely not be an issue, although with 5 hard drives as hard drive speeds increase it is still getting close. 

What I did find interesting were the little things. Under storage>disc information I found it very helpful that when you mouse over one of the drives listed that it shows you where in the NAS the drive is located. This may be a small thing, but when you have a drive in a raid, the last thing you want to do is remove the wrong drive and break your RAID entirely.

sw 5

Also under storage, you have the ability to mount ISO’s stored on the NAS. This allows you to burn ISO’s of all of your important software discs and to just run them right off of your NAS, just like in the old days when we would see CD drive arrays. The difference being, this is much smaller and it is also will perform much quicker.

sw 8

Even when using a NAS and RAID it’s always good to consider ways to backup your backup. Thecus has given a couple different options. First you have their data backup wizard that allows you to setup a backup to a remote Thecus NAS, another NAS on your network, or even Amazon’s S3 service. The cloud option is especially interesting to me. It’s great to see this included right with the N5550. No matter what you go with, they have made it simple to do with the wizard.

If none of those options will work for you, another option you have is the old school way of backing up to dvd’s by using a USB DVD burner. Thecus supports this with its data burn option. This also starts to explain why the N5550 has so many USB ports, Thecus has packed in a lot more functionality than our other NAS’s.

sw 6

sw 7

The last but most interesting functionality of the N5550’s software is its ability to add modules. You can find those modules both on their website and through outside forums that use their API. From Thecus you have the following list of modules

Access Guard module

Dashboard Module (for iphone support)

Dropbox module

ElephantDrive module

HiSSH module

IP CAM module

Local Display module

Mail server module

MySQL module

NZB module

Piczza! Module

Raid Replication Module

Rsync backup module

T-OnTheGo and Transcoding service Module

Transmission (BT Client) Module

Twonky media server module

USB & eSATA schedule backup module

VirusScan module (McAfee Antivirus )

Web Server module

WebDisk module

That is a hell of a list just from them alone. A few notable modules are the Dropbox, Local Display, virus scan, transmission, and webserver modules. With just the modules provided by Thecus, you can run a full web server including a database as well as download your torrent files using the NAS itself. The local display option is especially interesting because it puts to use the HDMI output built into the N5550 and allows you to run a mouse and keyboard while being hooked to your tv. This lets you control the N5550 as well as gives you full media playback options, meaning the N5550 could double as your HTPC if needed.

When digging into the 3rd party options for modules you will find anything else you could ever imagine really. I even found people running their Minecraft servers on their NAS! Other interesting options are different multimedia suites like XBMC, VCL, and Plex, Usenet grabbers, even mumble servers. The options are almost limitless really.

When playing around with the module ability of the N5550, I was a little disappointed in how easy it is to set these up. I would understand it from the 3rd party modules, but when installing the dropbox module for example.  You have to logout of the control panel and log into the module section to setup your modules. This made the process more complicated than I would have liked. But considering the selection of modules you have to work with, it’s still worth it. Hopefully Thecus will work on making this easier in the future though.

sw software3

sw software4

 

Log in to comment

garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28490 23 Nov 2012 18:04
For those of you who aren't stuck in lines shopping, this is something that should keep you busy for a while. Enjoy!
Wingless92's Avatar
Wingless92 replied the topic: #28491 23 Nov 2012 20:57
o
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28492 23 Nov 2012 21:09
It does support 4tb drives and there are people running minecraft servers on them as mentioned in the review :)

It also supports backing up to the cloud via Amazone S3 (and other options when using after market modules)

The price is actually less than other 5 bay devices.
www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?...sNodeId=1&name=5-Bay

I also found it available for $360

www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home...&Q=&is=REG&A=details
Wingless92's Avatar
Wingless92 replied the topic: #28493 23 Nov 2012 22:37
Didn't see the Minecraft item. I wasn't saying let the server back it up to the cloud just that you should have a 3 backup system. One local, offsite and in the cloud.
L0rdG1gabyt3's Avatar
L0rdG1gabyt3 replied the topic: #28494 23 Nov 2012 22:38
On the Pros/Cons, you list the Atom processor and 2GB of ram as Pro's.

How is an Atom processor a pro in any evaluation?
Wingless92's Avatar
Wingless92 replied the topic: #28495 23 Nov 2012 22:47
Not sure, I know when I had my laptop the Atom CPU was a pile of garbage. Then again it was cheap as hell, lol. Kinda get what you pay from. It was a couple of years ago and CPU's have improved but still. I wouldn't say its a pro.

Cool that you can upgrade the memory. It just seems that it's trying to be a full windows server box and a NAS at the same time. I would much rather have it be just a NAS and be done with it.

As for other NAS boxes, people love Drobo's cause they are built like a tank and they have been proven over the years to be great at data redundancy. I would like to know what would happen with this NAS if, lets say, you had all of the drives populated, started copying stuff over to one drive and then yanked it out and stuck another drive in. I know my machine would crash and burn, lol. Would this do the same? I'm guessing so, just wondering.

I have looked at the WD Red's before I built my current WHS box but the read writes are much slower than what I wanted, but that's me.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28496 23 Nov 2012 23:30

L0rdG1gabyt3 wrote: On the Pros/Cons, you list the Atom processor and 2GB of ram as Pro's.

How is an Atom processor a pro in any evaluation?


Low power usage yet still more than enough power to handle everything I did with the box. The D2550 Atom processor used in this NAS was only recently introduced. It is dual core and also includes hyperthreading with a clock speed of 1.86 GHz. This isn't the same Atom processor that you have used in the past, but this also isn't an extremely demanding application. You want your NAS to use very little power as well. Thats where the 10 watt TDP for the CPU comes in handy.

Wingless92 wrote: Not sure, I know when I had my laptop the Atom CPU was a pile of garbage. Then again it was cheap as hell, lol. Kinda get what you pay from. It was a couple of years ago and CPU's have improved but still. I wouldn't say its a pro.

Cool that you can upgrade the memory. It just seems that it's trying to be a full windows server box and a NAS at the same time. I would much rather have it be just a NAS and be done with it.

As for other NAS boxes, people love Drobo's cause they are built like a tank and they have been proven over the years to be great at data redundancy. I would like to know what would happen with this NAS if, lets say, you had all of the drives populated, started copying stuff over to one drive and then yanked it out and stuck another drive in. I know my machine would crash and burn, lol. Would this do the same? I'm guessing so, just wondering.

I have looked at the WD Red's before I built my current WHS box but the read writes are much slower than what I wanted, but that's me.


Also Wingless, have you had a NAS box? These are features that almost all of the companys offer in their NAS's anymore (modules and whatnot). The main thing that stands out between this and what I have seen in the past is the variety of modules that are available. You don't have to run any of the modules if you don't want to and it will still perform fine as a NAS as it sits. I'm not sure why you would be upset that a NAS has more features

This NAS and the Drobo would handle that situation the same as any other device. Pulling a drive out mid data transfer is any situation is going to end badly.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28497 23 Nov 2012 23:35
I also should have mentioned that the Atom CPU used in the N5550 is faster than what is used in most other NAS, that is why it was a pro. On top of the low power usage.
Arxon's Avatar
Arxon replied the topic: #28498 24 Nov 2012 00:14
Been debating on getting a NAS. Are they worth getting?

We have 1584 guests and no members online

supportus